Over 100MB Removable Drives Fight It Out: Magnetic vs Optical
Storage systems with removable disks and capacities of 100 Mbytes or more are beginning to be mounted in personal computers. Within a few years floppy disks with capacities of over 100 Mbytes and optical disks with capacities of 650 Mbytes are expected to be standard storage devices. Three types of high-density floppy disks have appeared in the US and Japan, with the Zip drive from Iomega Corp of the US leading in shipments. The LS-120 from Matsushita-Kotobuki Electronics Industries, Ltd of Japan and the drive being developed by Mitsumi Electric Co, Ltd of Japan follow closely in second and third place. In optical disk drives, the CD-R drives are receiving high praise because it allows data to be read on a standard CD-ROM drive.
MPEG-2 Encoders Launched for DVD,
Digital Satellite BroadcastingUS and Japanese IC manufacturers are shipping encoding chipsets that support the international Moving Picture Experts Group Phase 2 (MPEG-2) standard for realtime video data compression. The first applications will be video software production for digital satellite broadcasting and digital video disk (DVD) media. Eventual targets are encoding boards for PCs and home-use video recorders, both of which offer the potential for volume shipment. The first single-chip encoders aimed at these applications are expected by the end of 1996.
Design & Manufacturing
ISD Offers One-Chip Solution for Voice Record/Playback
Information Storage Devices Inc has marketed a voice recording chip without ADC/DAC, memory and compression/decompression processors. Thanks to its proprietary multilevel memory technology, the single-chip recorder stores and plays back up to 120 seconds worth of audio. In a simple recording/playback system, the ISD2500 chip requires a battery, a microphone, a speaker, three switches and a dozen passive components such as resistors and capacitors. Applications vary widely.
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